As Juneteenth returns, what happens now to African American history? – Bergen Record

Why learn history?
So your child might ask, as she struggles with her fifth grade report.
And so a politician might ask — when discussing, in the shadow of the Juneteenth federal holiday on June 19, the heated question of how, why or even if schools and museums should teach African American history.
“I think the broader thing to ask is: Why does it make people feel uncomfortable?” said Dolly Marshall, a preservationist, historian for the city of Camden, docent at the New Jersey Statehouse, and recipient of many awards for historic preservation, public service and research.
Because African American history does make some people feel uncomfortable. Now, more than ever.
In March, President Donald Trump singled out the National Museum of African American History and Culture in his attack on the Smithsonian, as an institution that promotes “improper ideology” and “divisive narratives.” His March 27 executive order targets funding for the African American museum, and others that engage, he says, in “ideological indoctrination … that distort our shared history.”
At least 18 states, including Florida, Arkansas and South Carolina, have rolled back the teaching of African American history in various ways — ranging from banning AP courses (Florida, South Carolina) to reducing their legitimacy (Arkansas won’t let such courses count toward graduation) to banning “Critical Race Theory” or any teaching that might result in a perceived feeling of “guilt” on the part of any student.
Books featuring people and characters of color account for 44% of the titles banned in schools, an even higher rate that those featuring LGBTQ themes (39%), said a 2024 report by the advocacy group PEN America.
Juneteenth is one of 11 cultural awareness events that the Defense Intelligence Agency “paused” in January, as a result of executive orders from the White House.
It is, of course, the celebration — a federal holiday since 2021 — of the de facto end of U.S. slavery: Galveston, June 19, 1866. Other “paused” events include Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Black History Month, LGBTQ Pride Month and Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“I never expected to see things quite like this in the U.S.,” said Chris Rasmussen, who teaches history at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck (“Race in American History” is one of his courses).
“I worry about those efforts to rein in the Smithsonian,” he said. “It’s troubling to think of Americans trimming their sails.”
What you think about all that may depend on what you think about history generally.
Why do we study it? The answer may not be so simple.
Is it to learn what happened in the past? To discover the truth? Perhaps.
But the teaching of history has always been tied to other things. The fostering of citizenship. The promoting of ideals and inspiration. It is, in short, a story we tell about ourselves.
Such things cross the ideological spectrum. The student in Texas learns about Davy Crockett and Sam Houston for the same reason that the student in Atlanta learns about Martin Luther King Jr. Both feed inspirational narratives. Both are stories about America.
But what happens when your story collides with my story? What if your wonderful Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence promising “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to all Americans, kept my ancestors as slaves?
That ruins the whole story. Or, at least, it makes it complicated — more so than some teachers, textbooks and politicians have the bandwidth for.
“There are many things that are admirable about the United States and its aspirations,” Rasmussen said. “But like every country, we have stories that — if we’re honest about them — are far from admirable. The African American story flies in the face of what we like to say we believe in, as a nation.”
American history, in short, is messy. Looking squarely at some of the less meritorious things can be uncomfortable. And that unease is just what some lawmakers, today, seem determined to make illegal.
“I think a lot of people have not come to terms with what has been done historically,” Marshall said. “We always have this controversy of who gets to tell the story. And who gets to determine the significance of stories. Every time we have commemorations and anniversaries, this becomes a debate.”
None of this is new. One need look no further than Independence Day, 1852.
While other orators turned the air purple with July Fourth boasting, Frederick Douglass delivered a classic speech, in Rochester, New York, that shot an arrow right into the heart of Uncle Sam.
“What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?” Douglass thundered. “I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.
“To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”
If America’s central holiday, July Fourth, can seem so different to different Americans, what about other things? History’s heroes and heroines, for instance?
Astronomer Benjamin Banneker, journalist Ida B. Wells, actor Ira Aldridge, Revolutionary War hero Crispus Attucks, poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, revolutionary Nat Turner and abolitionist Sojourner Truth are just some of the historical figures who were not taught in schools when author and historian Carter G. Woodson created “Negro History Week” in 1926. It was the seed that grew into Black History Month.
“African Americans have been contributing for a long time to this country,” said Yolanda Romero, secretary of the board of trustees for Mount Peace Cemetery in Lawnside, Camden County — a historic African American burial ground, founded in 1902 (Marshall is also a trustee). It contains, among other things, the grave of John Henry Lawson, a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient from the Civil War.
Those are the kinds of stories that, for long years, were unacknowledged by the mainstream educational system.
“They erase everybody who’s not White,” Romero said. “They only want White information.”
Why should there be African American history — as opposed to just American history? Aren’t we all just Americans? So people grumbled when Negro History Week began. And so they grumble today.
Is it possible to have a single American narrative? One that is not, to use the president’s word, “divisive”? One that acknowledges the historical realities, but still offers uplift, pride, on all sides?
America’s most fraught story — slavery — for instance. It has heroes, Black and White, who fought side by side for abolition. There’s enough uplift there for everybody, right?
“There were always people who knew that slavery was wrong, including White people,” Rasmussen said. “It’s not as though everybody was unanimously behind these institutions. It’s good to remember that there were people who called out these injustices at the time. It isn’t just a bunch of revisionist historians calling it out.”
But to tell that story, you have to first admit that there were — are — injustices. And that, for some, may still be a bridge too far.
“History is not just about celebrating what you would like to have happened,” Marshall said. “History is coming to terms with issues that are uncomfortable. That’s what this all stems from. There’s no recognition that there was a problem to begin with.”